Totally Gay

[Elspode]

I just want to live in a world where people can be gay if they want to, and no one really cares, as long as they aren't being forced to get it on with them.

On the other hand, when someone builds their entire life and image on morality that doesn't include being gay, then turns out to have those proclivities, they deserve to get reamed just for being stupid, judgemental and big stinking lying hypocrites.

[9th Engineer]

Just like if you ever find yourself going against your moral code you should have the same done to you for having such a stupid sense of morals?

[Elspode]

Yup. Unlike the disgraced preacher, my path requires me to take personal resposibility for my actions. I have no saviour to take away my stupidity. If I screw up, I get reamed. I pay the price, both in this world and the next. Pretty simple philosophy, and I think it makes me a good deal more careful.

It also helps that I don't go around professing to others how they should live their lives. It would be one thing if this guy had quietly been against homosexuality and drugs, then fell on his face. It is quite another to pound on a pulpit, all Righteous and imbued with Truth, then fall on his face.

[9th Engineer]

He is taking personal responsibility for his actions, he has stepped down and hasn't changed from what he was saying before.

On the other hand, when someone builds their entire life and image on morality that doesn't include being gay, then turns out to have those proclivities, they deserve to get reamed just for being stupid, judgemental and big stinking lying hypocrites.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you insinuate that the fault lies with them having a bad set of morals, not with struggling with something that they don't believe they should do. He believes that homosexual sex is a choice he made and that it was a sin, there's a separation of the person and the act in there. He's acting the same way as he would if he started doing meth or something else forbidden, then was forced to atone for his actions.
Even churchs that condem homosexuality almost always separate the sex itself from the person. It's not the urges that they find evil, it's going out and having a gay partner. I'm sure that if he had never given in to it and announced to his congregation that he himself is subject to these urges but was strong in the face of temptation he would have recieved an ovation.
You are projecting your belief that if a person has homosexual urges they must satisfy those urges, these people don't think that way.

[mrnoodle]

Originally Posted by Elspode

Yup. Unlike the disgraced preacher, my path requires me to take personal resposibility for my actions. I have no saviour to take away my stupidity. If I screw up, I get reamed. I pay the price, both in this world and the next. Pretty simple philosophy, and I think it makes me a good deal more careful.

That's a mischaracterization of Christianity. Consequences don't disappear, if anything they are more pronounced. The preacher is getting doubly slammed because he is doubly hypocritical. Beyond any personal price he pays for his lies, he has to answer for the fact that he has turned more people against God because they take his example as representative of the faith. God will judge him not just for what he did, but for the fact that he damaged the faith of others.

Matt. 18:7 -- Woe to the world because of the things that cause people to sin! Such things must come, but woe to the man through whom they come!

Preacher is in deep trouble, and aside from the status of his salvation, he will pay in a big way, if Jesus was telling the truth.

[Elspode]

No...I think that the guy deserves what happened to him because he went around telling other people that gay sex and drugs were bad, but he was doing it anyway. If he hadn't made a (probably lucrative) career out of peddling morality, then got caught with his pants down and a dollar billed rolled up and up his nose, then he'd just be another sad sack loser.

I'm happy he's taking personal responsibility. Its the least he can do after at first obfuscating the truth. This is the first step on the road to becoming a decent, upright human being.

My problem is ultimately this: Don't tell me that you hold Truth, then violate it. I'll be unsympathetic every time. Tell me you *believe* something, walk your talk, and I'll admire you...as long as you don't tell me it *is* The Truth, and that you alone have It. Don't claim The Truth, and then act as though it is your divine duty to make sure everyone else adheres to it, most especially while you, yourself, are out doing the very things against which you rail.

Of course, I am not referencing *you* specifically when I say "you"...

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

Preacher is in deep trouble, and aside from the status of his salvation, he will pay in a big way, if Jesus was telling the truth.

But still...he will be forgiven, as long as he accepts Jesus as his personal savior, so this life may suck, but Eternity will be cool.

[9th Engineer]

If he claimed he never violated the rules that would mean something different altogether

[Elspode]

He claimed, from a pulpit, that it was wrong to violate the rules, then did it. He told others how to live, but was unable to live that way.

That's the problem in dealing with absolutes. No wiggle room. No room for doubt...or real enlightenment...or real learning. Just failure and retribution.

No thanks.

That is the problem with "leaders" in faith...

[9th Engineer]

We have the same problems with our secular laws as well, even cops break the law from time to time. Doesn't mean we should scrap the system though

Faith and legal system are two, completely, different things.

Rob Quote, weakness of the Church

I think the biggest weakness/strength of the church is that it prays on the lazy... then creates/encourages lazy people.
Faith takes work, VERY HARD, constant, diligent work... "but it you just listen to me I can cut through all of that and give you the inside line, just help us pay for all this stuff, most of it (less than 10% on average in reality) is going to help others!" is religion's line & it is total BS. (Instead of line I wanted to say schpeal but I don't know how to spell it)

If it were, "we are a group of like-minded/faith(ed) people who want to help each other on our path" that would be fine... "we will only take/use as much as it takes to maintain our infrastructure and no more, there will be no associates that work for the institute, as it will be for all our benefit, we will all volunteer...." you get the idea. (The Mormon Church tries to say that they do this, it is a lie, they are, I think, the fourth richest company in the US, if churches were listed in those rankings. With associates intentionally placed in high ranking political positions, both locally and nationally. As opposite from that ideal as you can get).
Also... if that were true, there would be no dogma, especially stuff like some guy in Europe decides to make-up the rapture and everyone buys it. All the descendants of Calvinism with their Dooms Day shit (Though Watchtower is a blast to read) that never comes to pass and takes the focus off of the word.
It is all smoke and mirrors to INTENTIONALLY take the focus off of your personal relationship with your Savior and God so you are dependent/addicted to the fear/salvation cycle that they get you hooked-on.
The pay off is as much as you will shell out to keep from going to hell. I have never met a preacher in a poor neighborhood that did not live twice as well as his flock, & I have known a lot of them and am related to two.

These snake-oil salesmen prey on the fact that it IS scary that your fate is in your hands alone, that you don't have any talismans or magic yellow brick roads laid-out in front of you..."Don't go astray or you will go to hellllllll!"
It is very easy to fall for that comfort, "perhaps they do know what God wants from me and all I have to do is accept their interpretation of the Bible (even though they do not have a thorough understanding of the historical time period in which it is referring to and they always interpret what it says in today's social framework), that way I don't have to feel like I alone in this."
But, they are not if they truly have faith, God is always with them and their heart really, TRULY, knows what is right, what path to take... that is what meditation and prayer are for. If you believe you know that you have a part of God in you... that will show you the way if you learn how to listen to it, really listen with the Word of Jesus as a guide.
Having a supportive community, there to help you as fellow faithful and one that preys on the insecurity of that relationship in a position of authority and dogma, teaching "Us-&-Them", the farthest thing from anything Christ ever stated, are two different things.... I have yet to find the first.
You just can’t put an individual in a position of power like that, especially one that makes people so vulnerable.
Pride is our one great weakness, that pathway to sin that is greased with our most basic animal urges. All of the Seven Deadlies (though not Biblical) are all sins of Pride, in one form or another.
To place an individual where their ego is between the faithful and God is just so much temptation that one cannot expect that most will succumb to some form of pride…
The solution, there is no one individual that is the interpreter, the authority, the final word on the Word but what you know in your heart to be true and right based on the teachings of Christ (not the OT). If a group forms, it is just that…. A GROUP, all equal in discussion and discourse for the purpose of spiritual kinship and learning, never authority, profit, regulation; or, especially, dogma.

1 Peter 2:1-3
1But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you. They will secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the sovereign Lord who bought them—bringing swift destruction on themselves. 2Many will follow their shameful ways and will bring the way of truth into disrepute. 3In their greed these teachers will exploit you with stories they have made up. Their condemnation has long been hanging over them, and their destruction has not been sleeping.

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

I think the biggest weakness/strength of the church is that it prays on the lazy... then creates/encourages lazy people.

Unfortunately, Government does the same thing. Yet another reason why Religion and Government should be kept out of the same bed, no matter how much they try to crawl in with each other.

[mrnoodle]

Originally Posted by Elspode

But still...he will be forgiven, as long as he accepts Jesus as his personal savior, so this life may suck, but Eternity will be cool.

Because to God, any sin at all causes separation from his perfect will. He makes no distinction between lying to someone and cutting off their head, insofar as "sin" is concerned. To recognize your sin and accept forgiveness is all that's required. That's the whole point of Jesus dying. He became sin, and took the punishment in our place. That's not carte blanche to act any way you want, and you are right to doubt anything the preacher says. But man is not the example to follow, Christ is.

Jeffery Dahmer could have truly repented and been saved before his death, and spend eternity in a much better state than many lifelong "Christians" who weren't what they said they were.

[Elspode]

Originally Posted by mrnoodle

Jeffery Dahmer could have truly repented and been saved before his death, and spend eternity in a much better state than many lifelong "Christians" who weren't what they said they were.

I've always assumed there was a special place in their Hell for hypocritical Christians, especially dishonest ministers who use their platforms to fleece the seekers of divine grace.